Serving Well - Jonathan Trotter

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evangelism and cold workaholism, modeling integration and allowing the mind and heart to be simultaneously present.

      The psalmists weren’t scaredy cats, but they were sometimes scared. They weren’t sobbing piles of emotion, but they sometimes cried. They weren’t angry men, but they sometimes demanded sovereign revenge. They got depressed. They sang. They wept. They danced.

      And they prayed.

      Closing Argument

      We’re working in hard places in dangerous times; we need the Psalms. We’re working among people who’ve suffered tremendously and endured courageously; they need the Psalms.

      Jesus knew the Psalms and used them. A lot. So should we.

      How? Read them. Sing them. Pray them.

      We need the Psalms to be deeply planted and carefully cultivated.

      ~~~~~~~~~~

      For more in depth study of the Psalms, check out these books:

      The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms, Tim Keller

      The Case for the Psalms: Why They are Essential, N.T. Wright

      Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

      Develop Deeper Emotional Intelligence

      by Jonathan

      I personally think we missionaries are a smart bunch. Our textbook education is typically high. We’ve been to college, perhaps seminary, and we know some stuff. We’ve figured out how to use our cognition for the King, our intellect for the Incarnated. But while western education is first and foremost intellectual (and that’s not necessarily a bad thing), life is lived and people are loved on the street level, not the lecture hall.

      The classic quip about people caring how much you know only after they know how much you care is classic for a reason: it’s true. When we approach a hurting, lost world with brains first, we risk showing a skewed image of Christ. We need our hearts too.

      Hearts can seem to get in the way of missiology, and emotions are inefficient. Emotionally detached workaholics may be great at getting the job done. They might not make wonderful spouses or parents, but disconnected, task-oriented, stoic workers can be low-maintenance, efficient missionaries.

      Conversely, we must remember that emotions are Christlike. A missions force with low emotional intelligence is bad for missions, not to mention families, teams, and planted churches. When the DNA of new believers and new churches excludes the sometimes messy reality of the heart, it’s not healthy DNA. Furthermore, a disconnected, task-oriented, stoic missions force isn’t much like Jesus.

      Have you ever met a man or woman who seems bottled up emotionally, but the minute they start talking about the lost or missions, they start crying? I’ve met many folks like this, and I’m always baffled. When it comes to their families or other interpersonal relationships, they seem distant and cold, but the minute you mention unreached peoples, cue the waterworks. Something is not right about this picture.

      It’s awesome that they care about the lost, but how is it that all of their emotional capital got put there? Religion should not be the only place in their life where they really feel emotion.

      Building Emotional Intelligence

      To grow in emotional intelligence and awareness, we must practice. Read a psalm and the gospels and try to identify as many emotions as you can. Both involve people, and people feel. Ask yourself, “How do the hands of Jesus reveal the heart of the Father?” If Paul helps us to know the mind of Christ (a good thing), the Psalms show us Christ’s heart. It is the Psalms that Jesus turned to and quoted more often than any other book in the Hebrew Scriptures.

      But even more telling, the context in which Jesus referenced the Psalms was almost always when he was in a difficult situation. Jesus was hated without cause, which the Psalms foretold (Ps 35:19, 69:4; John 15:25). He quoted Psalm 22 while dying on the cross (Ps 22:1; Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34) and when talking about his betrayal (Ps 41:9; John 13:18). These are just a few of many examples. In stressful situations, when he was under duress or attack, Jesus referred to the Psalms. Maybe that’s when we need to remember the Psalms too.

      In our own lives, and in the lives of the people we live among, bad stuff is common. Corruption, danger, and loss are daily realities, and so we need the psalms. As we watch global instability and fear spread, we need workers with hearts that understand grief and loss. We need workers who know Christ as healer. We need workers who bring their full hearts to the mission field, not just their work ethic or their seminarian intellect, but also their vulnerable, wounded, and healing hearts.

      If we connected heart and mind, we’d get kinder, gentler, more sensitive cross-cultural workers. And kinder, gentler, more sensitive disciples.

      Making Room for Warrior Poets

      The foreign field appeals to warriors, and we amplify this fighting spirit with our dramatic quotes and motivational epigrams. But the unreached peoples of the world also need poets and artists, those who see and speak in different tones, with different cadence and quality.

      Too often we think of the soft qualities as counterproductive in church-planting work, especially among the least-reached. We recruit hard people for hard fields, and we can’t even imagine the artist or highly emotive worker surviving, let alone thriving. We need warriors, go-getters.

      But this approach is wrong, and for the sake of the gospel, we must change it. Tenderness, creativity, gentleness, and whimsy are not soft, esoteric qualities. These are qualities flowing straight from the heart of Christ.

      Yes, we should study the mind of Christ, but there is so much more. Christ’s death was not by guillotine, disconnecting head and body. His head was bloodied, his heart was pierced, and all of him was raised.

      Let’s make sure that all of him is preached. Let’s make sure that all of him is shown:

      Jesus the advocate and disrupter, the wild one who defied Rome from underneath.

      The brilliant intellect who befuddled the learned men.

      Let’s make sure we preach his heart too:

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